ABSENCE is the claim that, if a symbol appears on a map, then absence of the symbol from some map coordinate signifies absence of the corresponding property from the corresponding location. This claim is highly intuitive and widely endorsed. And if it is true, then cartographic representation is strikingly different from linguistic representation. I argue, however, that ABSENCE is false of various maps and that we have no reason to believe it is true of any maps. The intuition to the (...) contrary results from mistaking what a map simply conveys for what it literally represents. (shrink)

Many philosophers who advocate broadly pragmatist accounts of belief or language treat maps as paradigm examples of representation and they often assume that a pragmatic account of representation is obviously correct for maps (e.g. Dewey, Dretske, Millikan, Putnam and Ramsey). By examining mapping activities and the representational properties of maps in detail, this paper argues that no single notion of representation can fit every map or every mapping activity. This is bad news for pragmatists: if there are maps they can’t (...) cope with, we should question whether they can tell the full story about belief or language. (shrink)

Intentionality is a property of an important class of things: things that represent, or are about something. Thus a belief or sentence or story is about something, a painting or photo is of something, a sign is a sign of something, and a desire is a desire for something. These disparate things all display intentionality. They have content; they represent some state of affairs beyond themselves. The represented state of affairs need not be actual, and is not in the cases (...) of false belief, unfulfilled desire, or Salvadore Dali painting. (shrink)

It is often assumed that, though we may speak in sentences that express propositions only inexplicitly, our thoughts must express their propositional contents explicitly. This paper argues that, on the contrary, thoughts too may be inexplicit. Inexplicit thoughts may effectively drive behavior inasmuch as they rest on a foundation of imagistic cognition. The paper also sketches an approach to semantic theory that accommodates inexplicitness in mental representations as well as in spoken sentences.

In recent times the question of whether or not there is such a thing as nonconceptual content has been the object of much serious attention. For analytical philosophers, the locus classicus of the view that there is such a phenomena is to be found in Evans remarks about perceptual experience in Varieties of Reference. John McDowell has taken issue with Evans over his claim that "conceptual capacities are first brought into operation only when one makes a judgement of experience, and (...) at that point a different species of content comes into play" (McDowell 1994: 48). In contrast, he proposes that "A judgement of experience does not introduce a new kind of content, but simply endorses the conceptual content, or some of it, that is already possessed by the experience on which it is grounded" (McDowell 1994: 48-49). Ironically, in light of the ambitions of Mind and World, this sits very happily with the firmly embedded views of many traditional classical cognitivists. It has been a long-standing article of faith that, even in its most basic forms, perceptual content must be conceptual. But those who adopt this position have a heavy burden when it comes to explaining the origin and development of concepts (cf. Peacocke 1992a: 9). In line with the proposal that at least some primitive concepts must be innate, theorists like Fodor make appeal to the intrinsic character of such concepts to explain more complex conceptual contents and their essential characteristics (Fodor 1998: 130). Primitive concepts and their properties as simply assumed because of an explanatory need despite that fact that making this assumption has a paradoxical consequence --which, in this case, is revealed by Fodor's claim that all concepts must be acquired inductively (cf. Fodor 1998: 130-132). The good news is that if we opt for a nonconceptualist approach then we need not assume that any concepts are innate. There is a plausible programme afoot, initiated by Cussins, which hopes explain "the construction of cognitive properties out of non-cognitive properties" (Cussins 1990: 374). He encourages us to suppose "that the mind/world distinction is a phylogenetic or ontogenetic achievement" (Cussins 1990: 409). However, some advocates of nonconceptual content believe that providing this explanation will be a relatively straightforward, although clearly difficult, task given that a contentful base of nonconceptual informational states, of the kind Evans envisioned, is presupposed. My aim is to defend Evans but if if nonconceptual content is to play the important role assigned to it of helping to explain the development of concepts then we must explicate the nature of such content in such a way that does not presuppose that it is truth-conditional. We must also be able to say exactly what part nonconceptual responses play in judgement making and conceptual development. It is the burden of this paper to provide a sketch of how both these ends might be achieved and to offer some reasons for thinking the project is a viable one. I do this in two stages. The first is to advocate a modest biosemantic theory of nonconceptual content and the second is to show how this can shore up a Davidsonian understanding of the possession conditions for concepts. (shrink)

This paper argues that three characteristic modern positions concerning intentionality – namely, (1) that intentionality is ‘the mark of the mental’; (2) that intentionality concerns a specific type of objects having intentional inexistence; and (3) that intentionality somehow defies logic – are just three ‘modern myths’ that medieval philosophers, from whom the modern notion supposedly originated, would definitely reject.

The main thesis of this paper is twofold. In the first half of the paper, (§§1-2), I argue that there are two notions of mental representation, which I call objective and subjective. In the second part (§§3-7), I argue that this casts familiar tracking theories of mental representation as incomplete: while it is clear how they might account for objective representation, they at least require supplementation to account for subjective representation.

The traditional understanding of analyticity in terms of concept containment is revisited, but with a concept explicitly understood as a certain kind of mental representation and containment being read correspondingly literally. The resulting conception of analyticity avoids much of the vagueness associated with attempts to explicate analyticity in terms of synonymy by moving the locus of discussion from the philosophy of language to the philosophy of mind. The account provided here illustrates some interesting features of representations and explains, at least (...) in part, the special epistemic status of analytic judgments. (shrink)

The senses present their content in the form of images, three-dimensional arrays of located sense features. Peacocke’s “scenario content” is one attempt to capture image content; here, a richer notion is presented, sensory images include located objects and features predicated of them. It is argued that our grasp of the meaning of these images implies that they have propositional content. Two problems concerning image content are explored. The first is that even on an enriched conception, image content has certain expressive (...) limitations. In particular, it cannot express absolute location and time (as opposed to spatiotemporal relations) or logical complexity. Yet, perceptual experience does seem to express certain absolute locations—namely, here and now. How can it do so? Secondly, image content cannot exhaust the significance of perceptual states. This is proved by noting that perception, memory, and anticipation can have the same image content. Yet they have different significance. These problems show that some of the significance of sensory states comes from outside the image. (shrink)

Kant is often considered to have argued that perceptual awareness of objects in one's environment depends on the subject's possession of conceptual capacities. This conceptualist interpretation raises an immediate problem concerning the nature of perceptual awareness in non-rational, non-concept using animals. In this paper I argue that Kant’s claims concerning animal representation and consciousness do not foreclose the possibility of attributing to animals the capacity for objective perceptual consciousness, and that a non-conceptualist interpretation of Kant’s position concerning perceptual awareness can (...) actively endorse this attribution. Kant can consistently allow that animals have a point of view on the objective world which possesses a distinctive phenomenal character while denying what seems most important to him – viz. that animals have the capacity to take cognitive attitudes towards, and thus self-ascribe, their own representational states. (shrink)

This dissertation argues that mental representation is identical to phenomenal consciousness, and everything else that appears to be both mental and a matter of representation is not genuine mental representation, but either in some way derived from mental representation, or a case of non-mental representation.

A list of groceries, Professor Anscombe once suggested, might be used as a shopping list, telling what to buy, or it might be used as an inventory list, telling what has been bought (Anscombe 1957). If used as a shopping list, the world is supposed to conform to the representation: if the list does not match what is in the grocery bag, it is what is in the bag that is at fault. But if used as an inventory list, the (...) representation is supposed to conform to the world: if the list does not match what is in the bag, it is the list that is at fault. The first kind of representation, where the world is supposed to conform to the list, can be called "directive"; it represents or directs what is to be done. The second, where the list is supposed to conform to the world, can be called "descriptive"; it represents or describes what is the case. I wish to propose that there exist representations that face both these ways at once. With apologies to Dr. Doolittle, I call them pushmi-pullyu representations or PPRs. (shrink)

A straightforward way of thinking about perception is in terms of perceptual representation. Perception is the construction of perceptual representations that represent the world correctly or incorrectly. This way of thinking about perception has been questioned recently by those who deny that there are perceptual representations. This article examines some reasons for and against the concept of perceptual representation and explores some potential ways of resolving this debate. Then it analyzes what perceptual representations may be: if they attribute properties to (...) entities, what are these attributed properties, and what are the entities they are attributed to. (shrink)

This is an interdisciplinary study of what is cognitively going on when we interpret, respresent, or evaluate cultural entities, works of art included. In addition, the role of interpretation in experience and in cultural objects is elucidated from a cognitive point of view. The book relies on theories of action, perception, possible worlds, modalities, intentionality. cognition, and brain research, and it contains anumber of case studies. The book ptovides some new insights into some much-discussed problems related to interpretation.

Introduction There are some exceptions, which we shall see below, but virtually all theories in psychology and cognitive science make use of the notion of representation. Arguably, folk psychology also traffics in representations, or is at least strongly suggestive of their existence. There are many different types of things discussed in the psychological and philosophical literature that are candidates for representation-hood. First, there are the propositional attitudes – beliefs, judgments, desires, hopes etc. (see Chapters 9 and 17 of this volume). (...) If the propositional attitudes are representations, they are person-level representations – the judgment that the sun is bright pertains to John, not a subpersonal part of John. By contrast, the representations of edges in V1 of the cerebral cortex that neuroscientists talk about and David Marr’s symbolic representations of “zero-crossings” in early vision (Marr 1982) are at the “sub-personal” level – they apply to parts or states of a person (e.g. neural parts or computational states of the visual system). Another important distinction is often made among perceptual, cognitive, and action-oriented representations (e.g. motor commands). Another contrast lies between “stored representations” (e.g. memories) and “active representations” (e.g. a current perceptual state). Related to this is the distinction between “dispositional representations” and “occurrent representations.” Beliefs that are not currently being entertained are dispositional, e.g. your belief that the United States is in North America - no doubt you had this belief two minutes ago, but you were not consciously accessing it until you read this sentence. Occurrent representations, by contrast, are active, conscious thoughts or perceptions. Which leads us to another important distinction: 1 between conscious and non-conscious mental representations, once a bizarre-sounding distinction that has become familiar since Freud (see Chapter 4 of this volume). I mention these distinctions at the outset to give you some idea of the range of phenomena we will be considering, and to set the stage for our central “problem of representation”: what is a mental representation, exactly, and how do we go about deciding whether there are any? We know there are public representations of various kinds: words, maps, and pictures, among others.. (shrink)

In this paper I evaluate embodied social cognition, embodied cognition’s account of how we understand others. I identify and evaluate three claims that motivate embodied social cognition. These claims are not specific to social cognition; they are general hypotheses about cognition. As such, they may be used in more general arguments for embodied cognition. I argue that we have good reasons to reject these claims. Thus, the case for embodied social cognition fails. Moreover, to the extent that general arguments for (...) embodied cognition rest on these premises, they are correspondingly uncompelling. (shrink)

Based on an endorsement of the hypothesis of extended cognition , this paper proposes a criticism of the representationalist assumptions that still pertain to these contemporary models of cognition. I first rehearse some basic problems akin to any representationalist model of cognition, before proposing some more specific arguments directed against the necessity, the plausibility, and the coherence of the marriage between extended cognition and contemporary representationalism . Extended and distributed models of cognition have the resources to get rid of representationalism, (...) and they should better do it. Their adherence to representationalism might be an by-product of the extended character of the scientific study of cognition. (shrink)